When we differentiate, we simply offer students opportunities to think at a level appropriate to their ability - not their age nor their grade level.
I get lots of questions from overwhelmed folks who have suddenly landed in a new job in gifted ed and have had little training. "Where do I even start!?" is a very common cry. Here are three places to begin differentiating for gifted kids.
If you want to differentiate, you have to be ok that not every student will do every single task.
How do you handle grading within a differentiated classroom? While differentiating is certainly complex, this part is pretty simple, actually!
This differentiation technique is called “Concentric Circles”. You use it to move students up and down the ladder of abstraction, applying a single idea in multiple contexts.
Even what seems like a low-level “summarize” task can become beautifully high-level when we climb Bloom’s Taxonomy.
When we jump from “this kid likes board games” straight to “I’ll have them create a new board game”, we leave out important steps in the creative process and set kids up for disappointment (and end up with a lot of unfinished projects). Here’s how to scaffold a truly creative task.